BOOK REVIEW: ANGELFALL BY SUSAN EE

It's been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended
to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and
superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless
little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her
back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy
angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless
on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being
rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern
California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they
journey toward the angels' stronghold in San Francisco where she'll risk
everything to rescue her sister and he'll put himself at the mercy of his
greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

Look no further for an excellent angel book.

The concept of fallen angels in YA literature has been
thoroughly canvassed and even more thoroughly visited and revisited in recent
years. As with most contemporary genres, trends will come and trends will go,
and the fallen angel trend is going,
if popular opinion is to be believed. If you're among those who:

a) have managed not to come across too many fallen angel
novels, but wish to do so in the future;

c) like being a hipster and always going against the grain (so now when we're
supposed to scorn fallen angel books, you're determined to enjoy them),

then Angelfall
is just the book.

No spoilers ahead.

In the world of endless complaints about slow beginnings,
it's impossible not to appreciate how fast-paced Angelfall is from the get-go. With the opening scene being that of
a post-apocalyptic San Francisco already marred by endless destruction and
chaos, the story follows Penryn and her family's battle for survival in the
most literal of ways: the streets are a permanent battleground. And it takes
something more than brute strength to survive.

And there's hardly any teenage girl better equipped to
survive than Penryn, who has spent the majority of her life caring for her
disabled sister and her schizophrenic mother, in-between self-defense lessons
and combat training. In many ways, Penryn's struggles have reared their ugly
head long before the angels have descended to earth and begun to systematically
destroy the world as we know it.

But don't be tempted to consider Penryn a terminal no-nonsense humorless vigilante for her family in their struggle to evade the
avenging angels as well as many entirely human street gangs which have cropped
up everywhere since the apocalypse. In Penryn, there's a dose of tender
familial affection that's only too
relatable. Her devotion to her little sister rivals that of Katniss and Prim,
and her determination to keep her sister safe is ever-present throughout this
book. In fact, the familial affection in the whole of Angelfall is touching, and Susan Ee has managed to conquer
prejudice and demonstrate a multitude of ways in which a family can work
towards the same goal, even as their heads exist in different realities.

What's also staggering is just how much worldbuilding
there is in Angelfall for such a short novel. With there being no room for information dumping in-between action
scenes, and with Raffe-the-angel being less than eager about disclosing
anything, the amount of worldbuilding almost goes by unnoticed. It is
nevertheless there, and nevertheless expertly done. When Penryn's little sister
is kidnapped by a group of hostile angels and Penryn is forced to form an
uneasy alliance with a fallen angel in order to get her sister back, we are plunged
into the real essence of the story.

Penryn and Raffe. A girl in search of her sister, and an
angel in search of his wings. The Penryn/Raffe dynamic is arguably the most
interesting aspect of the book. Their snarky, humorous banter never fails to
produce a laugh and lighten the mood. And so, in a dark world, in the midst of
an apocalypse, where there is hardly any humor to be had - some humor is to be had! In fact, it's difficult to decide if it's
Raffe or his sword that took away the title of the sassiest character in the
book. (That sword is sassy, y'all!)
With such classics as "You are just
a bird with an attitude" and "Your giant head is getting too big for this forest.
Pretty soon, you're going to get stuck trying to walk between two tress",
Penryn and Raffe lighten the mood of an doubtlessly dark and foreboding series.
The light and the dark are well balanced, not only where the forces of dark and
light are concerned, but also where the atmosphere of the novel comes into
play.

Also, Raffe is sexy.
Which may have no merit with some readers, but it has quite a bit of merit with
us. (And apparently with Raffe himself. Not to mention Penryn.)

And so Angelfall
weaves the story of a tentative alliance between two characters from the opposite
sides of the on-going war: an angel who has come to earth to destroy it, and a
girl who is determined to save her sister, and potentially go about helping
save the world entire once her sister is back by her side. And while such an
alliance is likely to be a source of endless friction, and of endless conflict
within the reader, Susan Ee's characters are both so likable and so relatable
that the reader doesn't feel compelled to make a choice. Sure, we're not sure what Raffe's motives are, and we're not
sure if Penryn's sister is still alive when the events of the book begin to
unfold... but we're happily rooting for them both.

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